Foley undecided on Common Core change

TRUMBULL >> Tom Foley said he will meet with teachers, school board members and administrators to get their opinions before he decides whether as governor he would push for Connecticut to stop implementing the Common Core standards, but was unfamiliar with some of what has been done.

Foley, the Republican candidate for governor, said the performance standards now placed on schools “are so complicated, parents can’t make sense of them.”

In a press conference, Foley criticized Gov. Dannel P. Malloy for his educational reform measures in general, which he said should be implemented for failing schools and not across the board for districts that are successful.

“He should have gone in where there are schools that are underperforming and only mandated changes there. So mandating Common Core across the state was a mistake,” Foley said.

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When the gubernatorial candidate was told the State Board of Education already has an emphasis on turning around failing schools, known as the Commissioner’s Network, Foley had not heard of it.

“Well, if that is the case, why didn’t they focus on failing schools? That’s where the kids are being short-changed,” Foley asked.

He also admitted that he wasn’t that familiar with what the state school board was doing, although education reform has been an interest of his for 15 years.

“I know a lot about what has worked in other states, what effective policy can do. But with respect to the details about what is going on in the commissioners’ office, I don’t know much about that right now,” he said.

Foley feels local control is paramount.

“Our country was founded on the notion that if local government can solve problems, leave it there. Don’t take it up to a higher level,” Foley said.

He said unless you get the people responsible for the Common Core standards to buy into them, your initiatives will fail.

He said the Malloy administration has inserted itself “inappropriately into school districts where local control is doing a good job.”

Foley wants a uniform grading system applied to the schools so they can be ranked against each other on an A-F grading system.

He thought Florida has been pretty successful in education reform and could be a model, while he also pointed to Massachusetts, which started its reforms 20 years ago and is number one in achievement measures.

Foley favors in-district school choice, money follows the child, variable grants based on children’s needs and a third-grade reading test before they go to fourth grade. He said social promotion doesn’t work.

Oklahoma and South Carolina have signed laws pulling out of the Common Core initiative, according to the Washington Post, while others are considering this or renaming the initiative and creating their own standards.

The standards are the brainchild of the National Governors Association, which wanted a uniform way to compare educational outcomes across the country. While that was the intent, the paper said there continue to be 19 different assessment measures in schools nationwide.

The standards were adopted in 2010 and 2011 and the majority of states are retaining them, the Post reported.

The state Board of Education in 2010, under Gov. M. Jodi Rell, followed along and also adopted them with implementation playing out since then. It never went before the legislature.

The most common concern is with the tests used to measure those standards with complaints that they are not developmentally appropriate for children and measure materials not yet covered in school.

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